Watch Dogs Review

Watch Dogs has been one of my (and many others) most anticipated games ever since it’s extraordinarily impressive E3 2012 reveal. Now, after nearly 2 years, does the final product deliver? Ubisoft has a lot of promises to deliver on, as the various trailers and promotions have made it one of the most pre-ordered products in the company’s history, and expectations are on a par with titles like GRAW, Oblivion and GoW which ushered in the ‘next gen’ on the Xbox 360. Does Watch Dogs succeed at becoming the first truly ‘next gen’ game for Xbox One?

Storyline:

It’s also the first multiplatform open world game, but Chicago feels pretty generic. Many of the sights are there, but so much of the game takes place in the suburbs and grimy industrial estates that it could be just about any American city. That’s a shame, because everything else is full of life. At heart, Watch Dogs is part investigation, part revenge tale as uncle Aiden tries to find out who killed his little niece after a job went wrong.

There’s a strong cast of characters, and there’s plenty of near-future darkness as you find out more about the CTos and various slimy corporations and criminals. Clearly, some of the things going on are pretty ridiculous given that the game is effectively set in the present, but despite a little silliness here and there, Watch Dogs presents a decent plot, with plenty of extras to find via hacking and profiling citizens for those who really want to dig into the universe.

Gameplay:

Watch Dogs plays pretty much straight up like GTA, crossed with some very light Assassin’s Creed parkour (there’s even some little easter eggs suggesting they might be set in the same universe), with added hacking. Having said that, each of the individual elements offer up their own little disappointments. The core running, covering and shooting is probably on a par with GTA V, but the driving feels pretty wonky. Thankfully vehicles can take a fair bit of damage as the steering feels pretty light and brakes are mostly non-existent. Crashing is normally the best way of stopping fast, and at high speed the pop-in is both distracting and offers many new ways to wipe in as cars appear too close to avoid.

The free-running and climbing, for anyone familiar with the Assassin’s Creed games, feels hopelessly slow and under-utilised to the point where you almost wonder why the developers bothered including it in the game at all. The hacking, despite being one of the main selling points of the game mostly involves pressing or holding either X or Y, and the occasional dull puzzle. At times you almost wish there was the option to skip some of the sequences, or just have it run as a cut-scene or quick-time event to speed up the tedium. These are small niggles though, and hopefully ones that Ubisoft can rectify for the inevitable sequel.

For the most part, the campaign ends up being a very playable GTA clone with some bells and whistles. Missions follow the tried-and-tested formula of driving to a location, generally killing some dudes, then escaping. Watch Dogs isn’t completely generic though, as the gameplay does encourage stealth, and there’s normally multiple ways through a mission. You can also use your phone to distract enemies by sending them (some often very funny) spoof calls or texts, blow them up by hacking their grenades, or spooking them by operating nearby equipment. Various enemies also have special abilities, such as being able to call reinforcements, which can affect how you want to plan your approach. Driving is similar, with button hacks to deploy bollards, bridges or blow up steam pipes to chase off your pursuers. It’s just a shame that most of these have to be used on vehicles behind you, resulting in having to use the rear view, which resulted in plenty of head-on collisions.

Overall, Watch Dogs provides a good amount of content with a 15+ hour story, plenty of side content and online invasions on top. There’s certainly highs and lows, and I’d have definitely countenanced a shorter, but tighter experience, but either way, Watch Dogs still plays well, even if it’s not bringing any real gameplay innovations to the table.